Why I love our gatherings

Last year with the encouragement, support and deft management of our Associate Director, Susan Jacobs, we began to have gatherings of students and staff. MALS and IDS students live very busy lives. Some work full-time, some have families, and they all struggle to give their studies ample attention. MALS students see each other in their Core Courses [link to Core listings] and in elective courses they conspire to take together, but often, with their diverse interests–and in the absence of a fixed cohort–they are challenged to find a sense of community within the program they are all so committed to. And each IDS student’s program is so individualized that they rarely run across other IDS students in their classes. Our first two gatherings, Spring 09 and Autumn 09, combined conviviality with academic stuff: We ate and drank and heard students talk about their final projects. This winter, we held a Winter Tune-Up on research practices. Courtney Greene of the DePaul Library showed us cool stuff on searching and retrieving materials (even the faculty were amazed to learn about some of these new tools), and Javaria and Margaret from the Center for Writing-based Learning talked about the ways that the Writing Center (as we persist in calling it) can work with graduate students. I’ve taken lots of pictures at these gatherings, because I wanted to capture the excitement of our students as they talk about their projects, as they learn about what their fellow students are up to, and just enjoy spending time together.

So here’s a kind of informal gallery of faces and profiles of some of our interesting students. (By the way, if you click on any of the images, you’ll get nice, big gorgeous pictures.) Let’s start with last spring’s (2009) gathering. Here’s a montage banner I made from some photos you’ll see below. We use the banner on our Blackboard site, which is where our students find information about what’s going on in the program:

You see Michael, a “retired” actor and musical theater performer, who had just started the MALS Program that quarter, in the upper left talking with Donna, who had just finished the program. Both were in my “Yoga and Tantra” course. In the upper right is Rachel, informally presenting her thesis project on sexuality among the elderly. Rachel is an occupational therapist; her project grew out of her work in an assisted living facility with the elderly. Lower left you see another pair of starters and finishers. Kiel had just finished an IDS program focusing on disability studies, and in fact we just received the great news that he has been accepted at a PhD program in that field. Linda works for a company that publishes plays and has taken a number of courses related to drama. In the bottom center is Kristen, our Program Assistant, who is a grad student herself in education. Lower right is Megan, another person with a strong interest in theater. Here we captured her as she discussed her thesis project, an updating of Molière’s satire “The Learned Ladies.” Megan is also half of a two-person comedy troupe “Size Eight” that performs around Chicago.

At our Autumn 2009 gathering, there were new faces, students who hadn’t previously attended or had started more recently.

Cristina teaches in a small private school for girls in an inner city neighborhood. Her IDS program focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to counseling and education. Here she takes the opportunity to catch up with Susan Jacobs, our Associate Director.

Here I am in a group shot with some of the guys in the program. From left to right are Hakki, a Chicago police officer and veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hakki’s tattoo from the Ramayana is the banner of this blog. Then comes yours truly (I’m really not that short–just slouching here (!)). Next is Johnny, a Latin dance instructor. At the right end is Rodrigo, a graduate of DePaul’s Music School, and an accomplished pianist who is looking to pursue an academic career. Here are some of the graduates who presented at this gathering: First is Tosha, discussing her work on a mysterious iconographic image from the Caribbean.

Here’s Warren, discussing his project on memorials, comparing Holocaust memorials to the AIDS quilt. Warren works in development at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Finally, Willie here talks about a project that originated in a political science course at DePaul. It concerns the history of the Republican party and race in America.

Here are a few more photos from that day.

Jeff, an environmental activist in the MALS Program, is here interrupted from a conversation with Tosha.

Hakki and Susan in conversation. Because our students are adults, we generally have very relaxed interactions with them, but the gatherings give us a chance to socialize outside the context of advisement appointments.

A group shot of our congenial, and apparently very happy staff: Kristen, Program Assistant; Heath, Marketing & Communications Intern, and Susan Jacobs, Associate Director. For the Winter 2010 get-together, we organized a workshop on research. The workshop was partly integrated with Randy Honold’s new Core Course on “Environment and Society” (See the blog post “What’s a Core?”) but was created so that all MALS and IDS students would benefit. As I mentioned above, even the faculty attending learned new things. Here are some shots from the event:

Courtney, the library’s wizard of search-and-retrieve, presents electronic incantations to find just the right article in that obscure scholarly journal.

Isabel, a web designer, and Laura (speaking) a publicist, both IDS students looking to improve their professional skills and make contacts.

Javaria, from DePaul’s Center for Writing-Based Learning.

As always, even with a workshop focus, our gatherings are opportunities for students to connect socially. Johnny here chats with Jiale, who’s from China. Jiale has become fascinated with the religion and philosophy of his own culture, things are which difficult for young Chinese to study in their own land.

Linda and Lisa share their experiences in the program.

Nan, a MALS student, is a well-known theatrical costume designer in Chicago, and an instructor in DePaul’s Theatre School.

Randy Honold, Assistant Dean, Instructor in Philosophy, and professor for our “Environment and Society” course showed up on a Saturday and was quite absorbed in the Workshop presentations. Finally, here’s Zellencia, Angelique and Michael, absorbing and improving their research skills by the minute!

Welcome to Dense, Joyous, Modern

David Gitomer

I’m the director of DePaul University’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program and its sister program, Master of Arts/Master of Science of Interdisciplinary Studies Program. From our offices on Racine Avenue, near the western boundary of DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus, we see the rest of the city more easily than we see the rest of the campus. And our adult students are often more involved in their lives away from the university than they are in what gets called “campus life.” But we’re all thinking about graduate learning in an exhilarating interdisciplinary way. Check out our websites at IDS and MALS for official university program information. Stop by this blog often for reflections on what’s happening in the program, cool things that people should know about, or big questions that we’ve got to figure out.

I knew I would find the name of the blog in Whitman. Uncle Walt’s openness to all kinds of knowledge from all sorts of people everywhere in the globe, and his yearning and willingness to plunge into the heart of experience make him our hero. Illinois is of course the Prairie State.

Walt Whitman, “The Prairie States” from Leaves of Grass

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world contributed—freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,
The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,
To justify the past.